The Shell in my Stones' Jar - Crochet Stories (Washed Ashore)

 

I have spent many hours on the beach, walking and thinking and often trying not to collect. Not to pick up anything but eventually coming home with something or other. I disinfect, scrub and clean each piece of my booty and sort them  out into categories based on size and type. I have glass jars of varying sizes  and designs, all around my apartment, housing the various shells and stones that I have amassed. Yesterday, I spied what looked like a shell, lurking erroneously, in my large stones’ jar. I fished it out and realised it was one of those interesting pieces that I hadn’t been able to leave behind on the beach. Neither a stone nor a shell, but I had placed it in with the stones because this materiality dominated its form. It was a red laterite stone with an oyster shell stuck onto it.

 

 In Siolim, along the Chapora and at Ashwem beach one sees a lot of shells, mounted one on top of the other, clinging to the porous laterite stone which makes the stone very rough and difficult to sit on, or even walk over – especially bare footed. Out of curiosity, I once asked a local restauranteur why they do that and he said that oysters grow on rocks, which I found absurd, but for lack of any other information  kept mum. And then a few weeks on, as the quest continued, it was a  fisherman who enlightened me. Apparently the oysters secrete a substance that allows them to cling to the rocks and onto each other, to stay stable during the ebb and flow of the tide and river current. And they do this when they are breeding. Now that made much more sense than oysters growing on rocks but, I remember the other story better because it adds to an already curious shell-stone form.

 

The day had been a busy one. I had a meeting with the lawyer so had to leave before noon. The moment I parked it pelted down and the umbrella was no cover. My beige coloured trousers were splattered with mud and by the time I reached the courts – barely a three minute walk, I was soaked. As it happened the lawyer wasn’t there and I had to coax his colleague to listen to the details I needed him to understand, which he may not have understood from a cursory glance at the documents. Thereafter, I had to complete many odd chores and finally came home with the cushions that complete the interior décor of my flat, seven months after I have moved into it.

 

Simona comes to help out on  Fridays and so, despite the fact that I was rather tired by this point, the kitchen chores also had to be done. I had lots of other paper work to complete. I hate these constant phone calls and follow-ups. It is so annoying that no-one does anything until you remind or beg them to. So while Simona cut and chopped, I did my share of begging and reminding for the pest control, the internet cable to be installed, for a refund pending five years, for my car insurance claim that is almost a year overdue and more in the same vein. It’s work that has to be done but it’s not work that I enjoy doing.

 

 

I didn’t think that I would get any crochet done today. It was the shell in the stone jar, that inspired me. When I had dug it out, I left the it on my work-table, so couldn’t help but see it as I pottered around. Weeks went by and it lay there tempting me but, clearly it didn’t evoke the right feeling and many other stones and shells got crocheted. But today, as I winded down the day, even though it was late, I felt the need for some clarity. Precisely because the day had been so crowded with doing and phone calls and all the rest of it that, I hadn’t had much time for reflection. Aside from the early morning writing in my journal, which thankfully, I had managed to do before I drove to Mapusa, Porvorim, Panjim and back.

 

Laterite is a rusty-red-maroon stone that is quite nubbly in itself. The oysters add to this and make it even more rugged. This particular stone, with the shell attached to it,  also had some largish white spots dotted over its surface which may be because that the oysters eventually do get washed away with the tide and the secretion they use to adhere to the rock, changes its colour. I haven’t studied this  nor asked around, so it’s pure conjecture. But, holding this odd looking rock in my hands, pondering what colour to use, I decide that I  wanted to show off its texture as much as I could and picked an off-white yarn.

 

I hooked a chain of about forty stitches and closed it around the shell, just below where it sat, because it formed a ridge where the circle of chains could sit, hopefully, without slipping off. Then, I proceeded to crochet, adding another row of single crochet onto this line, working on the stone. I find this both challenging and fascinating because the object I am crocheting suggests what to do where, and I have to keep it simple. I cannot get all lacy and curvy with the chained lines because, with every stitch my steel hook hits the stone, scraping itself along the unrelenting and uneven surface making a grating sound, which isn’t pleasing. Nor is it easy to work around the form. I have less manoeuvrability and ease of access. Also, until I reach a point where the fabric is snugly fitting the stone and stops slipping off, especially when I pull the thread a tot to even out the tension of the stitches, it involves a lot of yanking up of the fabric, positioning it around the stone-shell and only then moving on. I have to do this manoeuvre, consistently, with almost each stitch.

 

However, this stone didn’t take too long to complete. Wanting to reveal more than cover, I used a lot of double crochet, which adds length very quickly. It is also no more than a couple of inches or just a bit more. It was late at night and I was listening to Eckhart Tolle on YouTube, speaking about accepting the unacceptable. Not a riveting talk because he repeats himself constantly, but when my hands are engaged, I am too involved with the thread work to be bothered to switch off the video, so I let it play on. By the end of it, between my crochet and Tolle’s droning on about being in the present, about being grateful even in the most difficult moments of life – for the simple fact that one is breathing and therefore all is well,  I felt calmer and relaxed enough, to feel like sleeping.

 

 

There is something about the hooking of thread and the complexity of working around these stones and shells, that engages with an intensity that somehow alleviates the tumult of emotion within.  I am not quite sure how it works but have noted the results and sometimes, pick up a stone to crochet just to get past difficult feelings of the moment.

 

It was passed midnight. It had been a long day, busy with daily-living chores and driving around navigating the rain. Even so, I was chuffed that I still managed to do some crochet. Having these moments to ponder on living with the flow of thread, or in this case, erratic needling of the chain, I feel a sense of ease that is difficult to put into words. But, having  done something more than just tend to the business of living, there is a sense of well-being. It doesn’t have to be a grand creative endeavour.  Sometimes just this little is enough to alleviate the stress.

 

The Marks of Living Continue to Fascinate - Crochet Stories (Washed Ashore)

I've been sorting through the stones and shells that I've collected - putting them together, mostly, according to their size. With the shells, the categories increase as there are broken bits, there are odds bits like oyster shells which seem like coagulated masses. I'm utterly enamoured of these 'darker' forms of the sea,  hoping to make them into pendants bringing out their salient features with silver filigree. Adding to my growing collection are also those shells which aren't quite shards but almost whole shells with the odd hole in them. I prize these the most from the current standpoint of wanting to sew/crotchet them onto fabric.
 

 

As I touch and feel each one and put them into their designate packets or transparent plastic containers, I marvel at the dents and marks, cracks and shards and pause to see just how perfect they seem with however their adventures through life has marked or shattered them. I can envision using all of them in some way. Nothing seems irrelevant. 
 

I'm often asked by people on the beach what I'm collecting. I say "anything I can find." The most usual response from them is "for an aquarium?" and I remain silent, wondering how could I ever explain that what I'm picking them up for,  is anything but the obvious aquarium. But yes, as a repository of life, mimicking the ocean of existence, I suppose it could be an aquarium of sorts. 
 

With the stones, no matter how small or large, the stoic acceptance of the weight they carry, becomes something to contemplate with regard to the weightiness of being that we, as humans, also carry.  Weathered by the tide, the wind and whatever other elemental experiences they may have passed through.  Do we manage this kind of acceptance? I cannot help but speculate, how on earth can one to muster such stoicism in the face of travails that have challenged and destroyed illusions of self? 
 

 

 

Then come the delicate, delightfully coloured and intricately patterned shells that appeal to the designer and pattern-maker in me. They are mostly separated parts of whole shells - the two almost identical faces that partner to create life, as they swim, tightly hugging each other, through the waves. The few little ones that I've found still intact, I've ventured to crack-open to discover that they're infertile - too young to have nurtured life. But, while all this charms, what I touch and feel and hold most carefully and thoughtfully, as each passes through my fingers, are the fragments that often don't even resemble shells. If I hadn't picked them off the sand I'd be hard-pressed to believe they were indeed shells. Despite being torn asunder thus, I've seen how they hold their ground - digging whatever is left of them into the sand, often more effectively than the stones. These fragments of broken rock pieces, that also people the beaches, are often well rounded but, mostly because of this, they inevitably tumble down, pulled back by the current, into the ocean, probably to be weathered even more. 

And it's the itsiest stones that I just love to collect. Occasionally if a friend comes along, and infected by my ardent fancy of all the rubble on the shore, starts picking up stuff for me. They exclaim "how can you even hold them, they're so small!" But, it's this smallness which I find evocative of diminishing egos that thrills me to hold - to catch their tiny, almost elusive forms, between my, comparatively giant-sized, index finger and thumb. They're adorable and sit together easily, no matter where I put them. They have an ease of belonging that's enviable. But, the process of getting there hurts like hell, doesn't it?